Proteins are the workhorses of the cell. Proteins catalyze chemical reactions, transduce signals in biological systems, provide structural elements in cells and the extracellular matrix, act as messengers, etc. One of the major causes of misbehavior of proteins is aggregation. This is not only a problem in the laboratory but also a problem in many diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. Aggregation is a particularly vexing problem when it comes to computationally designed proteins. For example, TOP7 is a computationally designed protein with a novel fold. A longer version of TOP7, TOP7 extended, is very prone to aggregation. TOP7ex is expressed predominantly as insoluble aggregates.
As more proteins are either designed or modified to be used a tools to study biological systems or as more proteins—wild type or modified—are used as therapeutic agents, there needs to be a system for routinely modifying these proteins to be more stable and/or to prevent aggregation.